THE BEAUTY OF TREES
By Margaret
Since the homebound life of the pandemic, I have been studying urban ecosystems in Wallingford, from our gardens to our urban wildlife. Today I invite you to pay attention to our trees. Trees provide us with the always-soothing effect of natural beauty. Trees provide shade from heat and improve air quality wherever they are. The effects of last summer’s heat dome would doubtless have been worse without our tree canopy. Trees serve as protection against the effects of our current climate catastrophe.
Part of what makes Wallingford such a beautiful area is its trees. Some are non-natives that have been selected for their unusual beauty. Some are natives that are older than most of the homes of our neighborhood. In every season and in every direction, a walk in Wallingford shows trees: solitary, crowded, sometimes clustered in family groups; dense with varied foliage or with limbs like ink against our gray winter sky.
THREE LOCAL GROVES
Here are suggestions for three different groves of trees to visit: one that will remind you of the beauty of our Pacific northwest landscape; and two that may bring gratitude for Wallingford’s foresighted landscapers.
If you are ever walking along North 39th Street between Burke Avenue and Meridian Avenue, look down! You are guaranteed to notice a lot of small-to-medium sized, soft, cute pine cones. If you look up, you will realize that you’re under some really tall pine trees. There is a grove of five beautiful Douglas Fir trees, spanning both sides of the street. This type of tree used to cover much of Seattle’s earth and we have a little group of survivors. Also, there is often lively bird action in this grove.
At the end of June, have you ever walked around Wallingford Center and noticed a sweet honey-like fragrance? There is a strip of Linden trees on Burke Avenue North between North 44th and North 45th, making a beautiful edge along the Center’s parking lot. They have delicately pointed oval leaves and tiny white flowers that usually bloom before the Fourth of July. They give this busy retail area a parklike feeling.
Do you take your dog to Wallingford Playfield for the Twilight Bark? Look to the southeast corner of the park by the tennis courts. You will notice the impressive grouping of huge, thick-trunked, knobbly barked trees. This group of Sycamore trees work as a kind of umbrella, should you be caught in the rain!
This is a lovely idea for a short article. I walk through these areas often, and know all the trees written of herein. As my name suggests, I love the trees of our neighborhood. Therefore, I cannot let pass two quibbles. First, Douglas Firs are not pine trees. Second, Wallingford Park is not a dog park. Thank you!
Good Morning! Thanks for a wonderful reminder of the benefits of our tree canopy, something currently under threat from increased lot coverage and incentivized development being promoted under the zoning changes enacted by City Council.
In these times of escalating climate events, trees and open green space serve to help mitigate the adverse impacts of paving the City.
Also good for us in rainstorms, as I suppose sometimes may occur around here. For this and also cooling, conifers like the Douglas fir have some advantages – usually denser, and stay in leaf during the winter when we have a lot of our storm events. I don’t think SDOT ever plants conifers, so it’s up to homeowners. Most will do fine here with no assistance at all, but for spruces which rarely seem to do so well. The magnificent Douglas fir is quite at home, and mountain hemlock is an attractive and mild mannered option that’s probably more reliable than the native western hemlock.
Those Doug firs on N 39th, though … there are some between Burke N and Wallingford N, maybe what you meant?
Also visible from N 39th where those Douglas firs are – just a little east of Wallingford N – you can see a much less common native conifer, a Grand Fir, a couple houses to the north. I think that’s what it is. Grand fir is a “true fir”, unlike Douglas fir, and it seems to me that they often don’t look very happy in the city. This one appears to be doing great, though.